More than 160 Palestinians have been killed during protests in Gaza since 30 March, which marked the launch of mass Great March of Return demonstrations along the territory’s northern and eastern boundaries with Israel.

The Gaza-based rights group Al Mezan said last week that its “documentation reveals a clear trend of Israeli soldiers shooting protesters in the upper parts of their bodies.”

More than 300 Palestinians were injured during last Friday’s demonstrations, 204 of them by live ammunition, including 27 children.

Israel also launched missiles near the demonstrations, according to Al Mezan. Four were wounded by shrapnel from one of the strikes.

Several journalists and paramedics were injured by live bullets and projectiles. This video shows a paramedic who was hit in the eye:

A new report by Amnesty International decries Israeli soldiers’ use of “high-velocity military weapons designed to cause maximum harm to Palestinian protesters who do not pose an imminent threat to them” during the past six months of Great March of Return protests.

Completely illegal

“These apparently deliberate attempts to kill and maim are deeply disturbing, not to mention completely illegal,” Amnesty states. “Some of these cases appear to amount to wilful killing, a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime.”

The high number of reported injuries to the knees, “which increase the probability of bullet fragmentation, are particularly disturbing.”

The right group adds that “many of the wounds observed by doctors in Gaza are consistent with those caused by high-velocity Israeli-manufactured Tavor rifles using 5.56mm military ammunition.”

Lieberman will need the approval of the cabinet to halt supplies, which were resumed on Sunday after the defense minister had ordered their suspension earlier in the month.

UN officials have repeatedly warned of a catastrophic collapse of essential services such as hospitals and water and sanitation facilities if fuel supplies in Gaza run out.

Gaza’s two million residents endure power outages of up to 20 hours per day after more than a decade of siege, multiple Israeli military assaults damaging the territory’s sole power plant, and a protracted impasse between the Palestinian governments in Gaza and the West Bank.

“Gaza is imploding”

Nickolay Mladenov, the UN’s Middle East envoy, warned the Security Council last week that “The situation in Gaza is imploding. This is not a hyperbole. This is not alarmism. It is a reality.”

He added “we remain on the brink of another potentially devastating conflict” as “all key indicators – humanitarian, economic, security and political – continue to deteriorate.”

Mladenov, along with Egypt, is facilitating indirect talks between Israel and Hamas to reach a long-term truce in Gaza.

His office also seeks the transfer of authority over Gaza’s internal affairs to the American and European-backed Palestinian Authority, whose security forces serve as an enforcement arm of Israel’s occupation, and out of the hands of Hamas, which opposes normalization with Israel.

Hagai El-Ad, director of the Israeli group B’Tselem, also addressed the UN Security Council last Thursday:

“We do not focus on how many is the right number of states to achieve a ‘solution.’ Instead we focus on the realization of human rights,” he said.

He pointed to Israel’s “well-oiled farce” to legalize and whitewash its rights abuses against Palestinians.

“We are now quite expert at constructing this façade of legality, which has been very successful at allowing us not to have to deal with any real international consequences,” he said.

“None of these actions has anything to do with security, as Israel tries to argue. They do, however, affect the amorphous construct called the Middle East Peace Process.”

He added: “If one looks beyond the blinders of this process, it is clear to see how its supposedly yet-to-be-negotiated outcome is in reality being dictated, day in and day out, by unilateral Israeli actions. Members of the Security Council, the only thing being ‘processed’ here is Palestine.”

Following El-Ad’s remarks, Israel’s ambassador to the UN called the B’Tselem director “an Israeli citizen in the service of the enemy” and a “collaborator” in Hebrew in the UN chamber:

Dani Danon perfectly exemplified at the #UNSC today the depths of Israeli hypocrisy. In English, Israel is a “democracy.” In Hebrew, without translation — calling me a "collaborator" with the enemy —incitement. “Democracy” reduced to propaganda for external consumption.

Oren Hazan, a lawmaker in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party notorious for incitement, posted on his Facebook page an image of El-Ad at the Security Council with the text “Wanted dead or alive,” calling on the public to report El-Ad’s whereabouts.

Likud member of Knesset posts on his FB page a poster with the image of human rights defender Hagai Elad (@btselem's Executive Director). "Wanted dead or alive"The post, still up on FB, asks the public to provide info on Elad's location & calls him a liar and a traitor. pic.twitter.com/lUx3kULkyb

Israel has escalated its longstanding efforts to hamper B’Tselem’s work documenting human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Last summer a bill was introduced that would make it a crime for groups like B’Tselem to record video of Israeli soldiers.

A video published by B’Tselem showing an army medic executing a prone man in the West Bank city of Hebron in 2016 provoked international outcry and led to the first conviction of an Israeli soldier on manslaughter charges over the killing of a Palestinian since 1987.

The soldier has since been released after serving nine months in prison and has been held up by Israeli leaders has a national hero.

Another alleged Palestinian assailant was shot dead by soldiers in Hebron on Monday.

Muhammad Muamar al-Atrash, 42, was killed after allegedly stabbing and lightly injuring a soldier near at a military checkpoint near the Ibrahimi mosque in the Old City.

Palestinian medics were reportedly prevented from providing treatment to the wounded man, whose body lay in the street:

Israeli soldiers allow Israeli settlers in Hebron to take pictures of the injuredPalestinian accused stabber, who's lying incapacitated on the street, dead or dying...without any medical attention https://t.co/inof7xtTuO

Seven Israelis and nine Palestinian assailants and alleged assailants have been killed in the context of alleged and actual attacks since the beginning of the year.

This article originally stated that Muntasir Muhammad Ismail al-Bazz was 17 years old, per Gaza’s health ministry. It has been corrected after confirming that his date of birth was 27 June 2000, making him 18 years old.